Early vs deferred highly active antiretroviral therapy in HIV infected infants: a European Collaborative Cohort Study

Without antiretroviral therapy (ART), approximately 20% of HIV-1 vertically infected infants develop severe disease manifestations before the age of 1 year [1] and surrogate markers poorly predict infants at higher risk of rapid disease progression. Several small prospective and retrospective studies in developed countries have suggested that ART initiated early in life could prevent this rapid clinical and immunologic deterioration [2-6].